perfidy

Joe Katzman cheerfully avoids the discomfort of actually having to answer the question I posed: exactly how big is the "big tent" of Idiotarianism?

"Leftists" in universities wink at Jihadists in the same way that "Rightists" at CCC meetings wink at cross burners.

You (the collective you) draw connections where they don't exist. Can a female university student believe that Palestinians have a legitimate cause, as a people? Not in Katzman's world: her belief structure means she is a "feminazi", an "islamofascist", an "anti-semite", an "animal rights nazi"... you get the idea. But there's more! She's also "hostile to rational thought", "winking at jihadists", an an apologist for murder, to boot!

Wow, that's a lot of evil in one little girl. Who knew?

All I say is she thinks the Palestinians might have a point. But your dots become fully connected, defensively, instantly...

And yes, Joe, filling a few paragraphs fifty percent full of insult and bluster cheapens discourse.

I believe in national health care. Did that qualify me for "radical left"? I think we need more regulation on corporations. Did that qualify me? Taxes don't really bother me all that much, although they should, given what I pay. I can keep going, if I haven't qualified yet.

Maybe I can take a brief time-out, and refer to you as a McVeigh Republican. Makes sense to me; if I have only one brush. You like guns and shootin' stuff and smaller government and blowin' stuff up, and so did he. But I won't, because it's just stupid. You're a more complex individual than that, and because you share one characteristic (smaller government) with a real bad guy, doesn't mean you share the entire belief system.

A system of belief is a complex, evolving entity. Simplification of this is a very bad idea because over-simplicity creates conflict. We need to have room to move. Diplomacy needs to be able to maneuver. Tolerance is based in flexibility. Viewing social issues as members of a class of NP-complete problems renders the whole unsolvable.

The "anti-idiotarian", nose in the air, close-minded, take no shit, f-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on, superiority complex delivered by the average invoker of the word seems, to many of us, to be a great way to create enemies unnecessarily. And that's how my family gets endangered.

Tolerance starts with respect, which is apparently in short supply these days.

So am I or ain't I the big "I"?

Do you want a label, or a discourse? The last line I hear from the right wingers I argue with (sorry, "debate with") in person is almost always "I can't respond to that, but you just have to respect the fact that I believe something different from you".

So I do. It's a start, because they're never going to change their minds if you don't.